Re: OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console

Lots of you have asked for more details on the games that OUYA will support at launch. After all, we are a game console, it makes sense that we’d be talking games!

We’ve purposely been pretty tight lipped about our launch slate, but throughout our Kickstarter run, we’ve been having some exciting conversations behind the scenes. We’d love to fill you in on everything, but it’s just not possible. (And we’d have some legal teams coming after us!) That said, we’ve got great news from NAMCO BANDAI to share:

"NAMCO BANDAI Games and OUYA are currently in active discussions to bring some of the world's biggest gaming properties to the exciting new open gaming platform. NAMCO BANDAI brings with it a rich history of iconic gaming franchises, from classics like PAC-MAN and GALAGA, to seminal franchises like TEKKEN and Ridge Racer, and we're excited to explore how we can work with OUYA to bring some great titles to the forthcoming console."
-- Carlson Choi, Vice President of Marketing, NAMCO BANDAI Games America, Inc.

I know what I want from Namco Bandai on OUYA but we want to hear from you. Head to the Namco/OUYA Facebook page, and cast your vote for any games you’d like to see.

FOUR CONTROLLER SUPPORT

Spoiler:

In response to a lot of the feedback we’ve received: OUYA will officially support up to four controllers. After all, what’s the point of playing in the living room if the other folks on the couch can’t join in?

IMPORTANT: If you want your four controllers to arrive in March when your console ships--and this is particularly important for those of you ordering the limited edition--please make sure to update your pledge today so that everything arrives at the same time. (For example: Those who pledged $99 for a console with one controller, can add on another $90 to receive an additional three controllers in March, rounding out the set of four. And--because we know you’ll ask--if you’ve got your heart set on the limited edition version, we’ll make sure that the controllers are matched.)

PLEX

Spoiler:

In addition to this gaming news, we at OUYA want to acknowledge that there are two sides to every coin. You’re either a morning person or a night person. (But not both.) Celtics fan or Lakers fan. (Maybe neither.) Horde or Alliance. Superman or Batman. Sith or Jedi. (You see where this is going.)

So, while tons of you were super psyched yesterday to hear that we’d support XBMC, many Plex loyalists clamored for Plex support on OUYA. We think they’ll be happy to hear that OUYA will support Plex. Why not try to please everyone?

WRAP UP

Spoiler:

Lastly, we have some final statements as we close the curtains on our last Kickstarter update.

We’re in the final stretch. Yesterday was a big day. In fact, we sold out of the $225 reward level entirely. There will be 2,500 people (Only. Ever.) with their own names carved into these puppies. Pretty cool. The personalized name etching might as well read: Big Spender. Because that’s what we’ll be thinking when we see it in your living room!

It’s worth noting that we’ve also sold out of the Developers Special reward ($699). That means 600 developers can look forward to receiving a first-run OUYA (already rooted) in December. With that comes EARLY SDK ACCESS, an extra controller, and we'll help you get started. On top of that, gamers will know you because your games will be marked with a FOUNDER EMBLEM and we’ll be helping you on the promotional side for a year.

When Kickstarter ends tonight at 10 p.m. PT, the OUYA team will be celebrating together. It’s been a lot of work, and a wild 29-day ride, but we are so grateful for the support. Our first toast will be dedicated to you, the backers who made OUYA possible.

After that, it’s back to work. We’ve got aggressive goals and we’re going to deliver. We’ll continue to push for the best content and coolest features we can bring to our little magic box. We’ll keep you apprised of the controller as it takes shape. We’ll continue to interact with you via Facebook, reddit, Twitter, Google+ and of course, our soon-to-come homepage at www.ouya.tv. And we’ll continue to listen to your requests, and answer your questions.

We cannot emphasize enough how much your actions and attitudes have influenced us. You’ve taken our dreams and made them your own, and together we will make them real.

Re: OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console

Our campaign ended a month ago, and we’ve been heads-down cranking on OUYA.

I’m writing to give you the full update. In fact, I will continue to send updates every few weeks until we launch. First up: you guessed it...

GAMES

We’re happy to say that our inbox is packed full of emails from talented developers looking to bring their games to life on OUYA. This is great news since pre-orders continue to roll into OUYA.tv. Great games, big audience, a perfect marriage.

Some of you have full-fledged games completed, others are in the process, and some of you are just starting to dream. We’re going through each and every one of your emails, playing your games, watching your videos, and reading your stories. We're working on our developer support plans and will share more details in the coming months.

Remember, developers, we’re on track to deliver our SDK to you this December. That gives you about 90 days to get your work ready to test out on OUYA before launch. Get crackin!

If you haven’t shared your game with us yet, remember to reach out to devs@ouya.tv.

NI HAO

Muffi and I just got back from Taiwan and Hong Kong. We met with manufacturers and suppliers -- all eager to bring OUYA to the world. We’ve decided on our design-manufacturing team, and we couldn’t be happier. We’re now finalizing our circuit-board layout, overall design, and what’s referred to as the “CMF” - colors, materials and finish.

Here are just some of the small, but important, questions we’re answering:

“Where will the circuit board rest within the console itself?”

“What’s the thermal impact within our little box?” (How do we keep it from getting too hot.)

“Where do we position the WiFi antenna for best performance?”

“Just how will the box open from the top, and what’s the first reaction we want our backers to have when they open it?”

Finally, we are beginning to test each controller button, grip, and stick with not only our manufacturing partners but some of our developer friends (thank you Adam and Zach!). Again, YOUR input into this process has been highly appreciated:

You inspired the O-U-Y-A button scheme

You helped us nail down a precision D-Pad

You cemented the importance of four triggers

USER INTERFACE

With input from Yves and fuseproject, and our skilled team of developers, we’re making game discovery—as well as the overall OUYA experience—something simple, new and beautiful. We should have more to show you soon...sorry for the tease but we want it to be great.

TEAM

As you can probably guess, we’ve been beefing up our software development team. They’re working hard to build our Developer SDK, APIs, and on-console UI. By the way, if you rock Ruby on Rails or know Android like the back of your hand, don’t just sit there! Email us at jobs@ouya.tv and help us build OUYA.

TIMING

We’re set to meet our Kickstarter demand and then some -- which is phenomenal, because orders keep pouring in through our OUYA.tv pre-order page.

Kickstarters, expect a survey toward the end of this month. Among other things, we can’t wait to see what usernames you choose. You’ll have up to 16 characters to play with. Names are first-come-first served by backer number. Remember, there are over 63,000 backers who will reserve a username, so “Turbopianocat” will likely be easier to snag than, say, “Bob.”

STAY IN TOUCH

As always, we want to know what you’re thinking. We continue to monitor the comment thread on Kickstarter, interact with you on Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, and of course, we’re reading each and every one of your emails.

The dev consoles are an early version of the OUYA console and controller designed for developers to test their games on OUYA. Our Kickstarter developers are the first to get a crack at ‘em! We’re psyched to have you on board, and we can’t wait to see what pours from your brain!

Of course, when the final consoles ship, EVERY OUYA will be a dev console. We told you that already. What we didn’t tell you was that the advance dev consoles you ordered are pretty special – you’ll know what I mean when you open yours. They’re rare drops. :P [...]

OUYA is open… And we’re not just saying that. Since the beginning, we’ve wanted OUYA to be the most open game platform available. Don’t get me wrong, we love console games, but we believe they are suffering from the pandemic of the “closed” platform. Though there’s been a major democratization of computing power, development tools and engineering and design talent, publishing to the console has remained closed to most. As a result, gamers have fewer choices.

But what does it really mean to be “open”? For starters, we told you about some of our choices in our Kickstarter. Today, we’re taking another step.

After hashing out a business-as-usual proprietary license for our software development kit (the OUYA Development Kit — or “ODK”), we realized that there’s really no pressing business reason to protect the ODK. So we thought, “what the heck?” and decided to release it under a well-established free software license:Apache 2.0 (which also happens to be the same license that governs the Android operating system). Though the Apache 2.0 license limits how developers can use, for example, OUYA’s trademarks, it pretty much lets developers take the software and tools and make them their own.

We think we’ve got a great team of developers here at OUYA, but there’s strength in numbers and a wealth of passionate, talented people out there. We want you, the developers of the world, to work alongside us to continually improve our platform. It’s our hope that releasing a more open ODK will help foster such innovation.

Please note that we’re still working on releasing the source code for various elements of the ODK — and since some of it is compiled object code, you won’t have access (at least not today) to every single line we’ve written. We want to be sure things are in really great shape before we release code. Also, we will be holding back some sections of the code to preserve the security of OUYA, especially when it comes to payments for developers and gamers.

Still, we’ve already started to see the community building extensions to the OUYA platform itself. Of course, we will be maintaining and releasing the “official” ODK of record — but we’re excited to see great ideas flourish, making the console experience better in ways we never anticipated. Over time, the plan is to incorporate the best of these inventions into the core ODK. Stay tuned for details on that!

One more thing: It’s worth mentioning that “open” does not mean “anarchy” — and as we continue to build out OUYA’s core services, please know that not every facet of OUYA will be totally open. In order to ensure the best possible experience for our gamers and developers, for example, we will be screening games for copyrighted content and offensive material (which we’ll define under our developer guidelines), and we’ll make sure that OUYA is a secure place to discover great games and conduct business.

It seems like a lot — but it’s simple, really. We are open because we believe it’s the best way to create the console platform we always wanted: one where gamemakers have the freedom to publish great games, developers can create wonderful recombinations of the platform itself, and gamers can enjoy the most creative, immersive and fun gaming experiences anywhere.

We just licked the stamps and waved a fond farewell to 1,200 OUYA Developer Consoles. These are the early versions of OUYA that developers will use to start making games. They’re on their way to developers around the globe – by land, air and sea. OK, only by air — we want you to get them quick. Devs, expect them on your doorstep within the next few days.

Here’s a list of the Dev Console package contents if you can’t watch the video right now:

Jet-black OUYA Devs package — “Thanks for believing”

Official Developer Welcome Letter (Frameable!)

One frosted translucent OUYA Dev Console

Surprise! We included a Micro-USB port, for your computer-hooking-up pleasure.

Two frosted translucent OUYA Dev Controllers

Batteries included!

HDMI cable

Micro-USB cable

Power adapter

There you have it. The OUYA Dev Console – sleek, solid and…see-through! (We’re, ahem, open.) As we said previously, these kits are very special. They’re a one-off design – “rare drops” for the most discerning and faithful developers whom we’re looking forward to meeting in the coming months.

They’re a work in progress, so we want your feedback. (Yes, we know the D-pad and triggers on the controller still need work — the final version will be different.) There will also be plenty of bugs…help us find them so we can fix ‘em! Please leave feedback on our forums at devs.ouya.tv.

And a little bonus is that the Dev Console has an early early early (you get that?) version of what our console UI will look like. We’ve been working on it, and we think you’ll love where we’re going with it. For now, here’s a screenshot of what it might look like when Kickstarter backers get their consoles in March…

So if you haven’t already guessed it, we’re opening up the OUYA Dev Portal, where developers can get all the information they need to start making games! [...]

Re: OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console

The controller’s the thing. We’ve been working from the beginning to make the controller experience as honed, fast and precise as possible.

Since the release of the OUYA Dev Console last month, developers around the world have sent us a ton of emails, comments, videos and forum posts… all about our controller. A lot of the feedback underscored things we were already changing, some comments were totally new, but ALL were great to hear.

With our latest build, we wanted to share some of the tweaks we’ve made:

D-pad: OK, OK we heard you :). We’ve changed our D-pad from a ‘disc’ to a ‘cross’ style. W00t! Gone are the days of the “accidental” diagonal move. Accuracy and precision are back.

Thumbsticks: The Dev console thumbstick top caps needed more grip, so we’ve added a rubberized top. This will give better traction and just feel better than the current design.

Touch Pad: It will be more responsive! The final material will help a lot. PRO TIP: In “Settings”, you can set the cursor speed to the fastest level to make it even more responsive.

Triggers: Take two — these weren’t *there* yet, so we’ve improved the design and mechanics. We heard you want them a little more flush with the body of the controller. So that’s what we’ve done.

Battery Bay: We’ve secured the battery for a snug fit! And the pull tab will be made out of a higher-quality material.

So there you have it. You talk. We listen (some of the time, at least :) and OUYA keeps getting better. Thank you.

Oh, and one last thing — we’re constantly pushing our controller to be as fast and responsive as possible. If that means setting up our lead engineer with an oscilloscope to test the button-to-screen latency of our controller down to the millisecond, so be it. Check it out:

We’re serious here. We want to make OUYA the best it can possibly be. So don’t stop telling us what you think — we can’t do it without you. You know where to find us… at ouya.tv, or via Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Google+.

Re: OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console

Engadget:OUYA developers sound off: successes and failures of the dev kit, one month out

Rami Ismail and the team at Vlambeer (Super Crate Box) were "pleasantly surprised" with the Ouya development kit. All three developers -- including Nathan Fouts of Mommy's Best Games and Tiny Tim Games' Jerrod Putman -- seem equally excited about the potential of Ouya to open game development to more people.

"We tried some 'native' Android code, but also Adobe Air and Unity code and it all worked without hassles," said Ismail. "Which basically means pretty much anyone -- amateur developer or professional team -- could get started making games."

But while each developer seemed optimistic in regards to Ouya, there are obvious hurdles still yet to come. Primarily, without the backing of a major company like Sony or Microsoft, there's no guarantee of a large player or developer base.

"This is really the biggest unknown now. Naturally, we hope it does well, because at the moment, this is the only way we can actually release console games, said Putman.

"While the hardware may be underpowered compared to an Xbox 360 or PS3, I fully expect better-than-late-PS2 visuals. And game-wise, the PS2 was no slouch."

OUYA, an Android-powered videogame console funded on crowd-funding site Kickstarter, will begin selling through Amazon, Gamestop and several other retailers.

Preorders for both consoles and controllers will start being accepted on Tuesday, in advance of retail availability in June 2013. Additional retailers include Target and Best Buy, who will sell the console for about $100.

Engadget:OUYA following mobile model: 'There will be a new OUYA every year'

There will be a new OUYA next year, and the year after that, unlike the traditional game console model, where new hardware ships in five- to seven-year generational increments. "Our strategy is very much similar to the mobile strategy," OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman told us in an interview this afternoon, following her There will be a new OUYA next year, and the year after that, unlike the traditional game console model, where new hardware ships in five- to seven-year generational increments. "Our strategy is very much similar to the mobile strategy," OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman told us in an interview this afternoon, following her DICE 2013 speech. "There will be a new OUYA every year. There will be an OUYA 2 and an OUYA 3," she added. One potentially featuring the recently revealed Tegra 4, perhaps, rather than the Tegra 3 powering the first units? It sure sounds like it. "We'll take advantage of faster, better processors, take advantage of prices falling. So if we can get more than 8GB of Flash in our box, we will," she explained.

But don't fret, nervous game buyer. Uhrman assured us that "all the games will be backward compatible" going forward. When pushed on how this will work, she said, "The games will be tied to you, the gamer," (like Steam is now) rather than tying your game licenses to the hardware you purchased (like, say, Nintendo's Wii U). 2013 speech. "There will be a new OUYA every year. There will be an OUYA 2 and an OUYA 3," she added. One potentially featuring the recently revealed Tegra 4, perhaps, rather than the Tegra 3 powering the first units? It sure sounds like it. "We'll take advantage of faster, better processors, take advantage of prices falling. So if we can get more than 8GB of Flash in our box, we will," she explained.

But don't fret, nervous game buyer. Uhrman assured us that "all the games will be backward compatible" going forward. When pushed on how this will work, she said, "The games will be tied to you, the gamer," (like Steam is now) rather than tying your game licenses to the hardware you purchased (like, say, Nintendo's Wii U).